From the ARCHIVE

After a long break from the violin, how can amateur violinists ease themselves back into playing? Regular correspondent ‘Lancastrian’ (Dr William Hardman) gives his thoughts

FROM THE STRAD

MARCH

1914 VOL.24 NO.287

All is ready, the bow tightened and rosined, and the violinist puts the violin up to his chin. How heavy it feels: how awkward the position: the bow, methinks, too, has increased ounces in weight! The artist essays to play some piece he knows well. How weak his fingers seem. They are not stopping in tune. Shocked, he tries various skips of intervals he used to do correctly without conscious effort. They come out painfully out of correspondence with what he has in his mind. He tries a little familiar double stopping. The result is woefully short of intention and expectation. Something simpler must be tried, and he goes through the scales with separate bowings. Alas! a new distress awaits our artist, for he discovers the movements of the bow, and the actions of the fingers have got out of precise correspondence. Cowed and disheartened he puts the instrument down and groans.

Thinks he, “Have I lost in these few months a good part of the results of years of conscientious endeavour? Shall I ever be the same again?” Yes! If you go the right way about it you will be as good as ever, and possibly better.

Select a composition—not an exercise, not even Rode, Kreutzer, or Fiorillo— but a composition possessing qualities the nature of which will be indicated by the example which, with all diffidence, I shall specify. The composition which is not exceeded by any other known to me in its perfect capacity for fulfilling the purpose intended is Bach’s Concerto, No.I, in A minor. This composition contains a lot of solid work for both fingers and bow. The technique required is elementary, but, as far as it goes, singularly exhaustive, as is so much of the music of this, I would say, greatest of composers. It is a grand composition, soul satisfying. It does not arouse paroxysms of emotional orgasm, but it creates a mood, an atmosphere. It never becomes hackneyed or stale, play it as often as you like, and there is not a really difficult bar in it. Commence by playing it very slowly. If there is the slightest inaccuracy in intonation, play the phrase over again, and as often as may be necessary to obtain correctness. Count bars frequently when there is any tendency to unsteadiness. There are so-called “accidentals’’ in fair number, and also changes of key, but always into closely related keys. Though much of this composition may be played in the first position, yet much of it can best be done justice to by the adoption of the various other more suitable positions. This means an almost constant changing of position, which takes the technique brought into requisition not quite so simple as, at a first glance, it might seem.

PHILLIP KNOTT